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Notes -
US and China slash tariffs as trade war cools
It looks like we will experience a de-escalation of the tariff battle between the US and China.
How does this line up with your personal predictions for how this was going to proceed?
My belief was that both sides would maintain 100+% tariffs but exempt essentially everything that matters. This development shows that I was wrong and I don't understand something about the events that have occurred. Does anybody have any ideas on what I missed?
So... Trump blinked? These are the tariff numbers we would have if Trump had just imposed the flat 10% rate on China he did on every other country. What benefit did the United States get out of this pause on trade with China? I guess Trump and his inner circle probably made a killing on insider trading this announcement.
He got to 30 and people are calling it a good thing. If he started at this number people would shriek at it. If de minimis nuking is still there in the background overshadowed by all the other stuff, then he also got to kill shein and temu and aliexpress
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Giving myself credit for calling this one, although we can quibble over exact timing. I tried to keep my head down a bit until the outcome could truly be called.
Quoth me:
(I solemnly swear I didn't edit anything material in this post to make my prediction look better)
and
I think my May 2nd deadline was also met, since China was technically the ONLY holdout that still had massive Tariffs on it at that point.
And then there's this bit from the OP article:
Remember what I said up there: "and markets will 'correct course.'
I'm sure there will be other disruptions, but someone can probably run some numbers and tell me if this recovery basically makes all the turmoil of early April a wash in terms of broad economic impact (on the markets, that is). WHICH IS TO SAY, if all the doomsaying and gnashing of teeth at the time was... premature and melodramatic.
I continue to think my Model of Trump is far better at predicting his actions than virtually any pundit out there, and he's far more of a rational actor than even people here credit him. Yes, I'll accept the argument that Trump backed down faster because he was afraid of really breaking something, but the whole argument is over whether the U.S. will find itself in a stronger position after all this is done. I see this as evidence that yes, the U.S. will be able to reduce global 'paper' barriers to trade, and other countries may be handing over some tribute to the U.S. to keep in its good graces for the next few years.
The one thing I admit surprise over is that there's been relatively few deals regarding the purchase of U.S. goods OR offers to sell foreign resources. The U.K. is apparently going to buy U.S. Beef, and the Ukraine Mineral Deal is signed, and I guess there's some additional deals with Vietnam. Honestly I can say I thought there'd be more capitulation by now, but now there's a new deadline in place.
So maybe Trump hasn't brought home the bacon just yet.
To add on to my prediction, I'll say I expect that the 'final' deals being worked on during the pause will start getting executed BEFORE the one month countdown mark hits, that is we should start seeing them in the next 60 days.
I do expect more hard agreements for purchases of resources and goods, and I ALSO expect some legislation might follow that is designed to bolster U.S. manufacturing for military purposes (i.e. aimed at onshoring factories that can produce tanks, ammunition, planes, and ESPECIALLY boats).
As we get a bit closer to the deadline, I might take a stab at guessing which countries might try calling his bluff and letting the timer run out. I'm not so blind as to expect everything to go completely smoothly. I wouldn't have called the India-Pakistan kerfuffle starting up for example.
That first link goes to the 2nd page of your most recent posts. Is that what you intended? It will mean that if the post you wanted users to look at was there, it won't be there later as you make more posts.
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I expect Canada to call the bluff; I also expect this one to, uniquely, be a bit less of a bluff than it is for everyone else. I think a lot of the onshoring is, or could be reasonably expected to, come from factories and personnel in Ontario- it might legitimately be easier for the US to increase the size of the US and onshore manufacturing that way. Fortunately for him, the people who are working in those factories just lost an election to a bunch of welfare queens (and the losers know it); all Trump need do now is stay the course and have the Premiers sue for peace on their own terms.
The problem is just that the negotiations are, unusually, public; everyone else just has to wait (and get their panties in a twist, and complain on the Internet). It's only been 4 months.
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Britain and the EU won't buy beef from hormone-fed cattle. The way they talk about it, this probably won't change.
As discussed previously this is a nothingburger, but if it makes Trump happy, good job Zelensky.
Sounds like they may align with RFK Jr.'s stance. It'd be interesting if that creates enough of a market for hormone-free cattle that it shifts U.S. production as a whole.
I don't have any specific insight as to intentions there, but I assume markets will respond to shifted incentives like that.
I'm pretty sure the main goal of that particular provision is to give the U.S. a "stake" in Ukrainian independence that falls short of bringing them into NATO, but justifies them having some kind of presence in country to act as a deterrent.
Like holy cow, your own article points out:
So if the U.S. has an official agreement granting an interest in those deposits, even if its not mineable now, its a decent deterrent to future Russian incursions into the border areas that Russia would have to cross through to drive into Ukraine. It gives a future U.S. president some basic cover to drop some troops or similar in, if needed.
The U.S. keeps finding deposits of rare earth elements and other resources within its own territory (whether they can be extracted economically is a different question).
There is no SOLID reason the U.S. should have any stake in the security of Ukraine, but contriving one that's enough to give plausible cover for future actions is helpful towards leveraging a peace agreement.
This is what I'm trying to get across, if you assume Trump is JUST trying to secure the first order goal, getting more minerals for the U.S., rather than using that as leverage to work towards a lasting peace agreement, you're severely underestimating the man. Hell, he's apparently gotten Ukraine actually paying for U.S. weapons now. A second step seems to be using American companies to rebuild Ukraine, but I'll go on record saying that rebuilding probably won't solve their their population nosedive so in the longer term it'll be a bit pointless.
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Loosely in line, though I'm not on record so you'll have to take my word for it. My expectation for this entire tariff routine is that after a great deal of can-kicking things will settle into a slightly-to-moderately worse approximation of status quo ante that will be harmful but not catastrophic. Trump will present this as a massive win.
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The tariff's hurt China too. For reasons I can only speculate, all I've ever heard about tariffs are that they are stupid when the US does it, and brilliant when other countries (especially China) do them to us to protect their industrial base. While there may be something to the specific circumstances that could support this narrative, it is rarely evident in the reporting. If you've ever been inoculated against Gell-Mann Amnesia, you'd detect a psyop going on here.
China has basically stopped even reporting financial figures, not even the fraudulent ones you need to read between the lines of. There is effectively no reliable information about how the tariff's are impacting China's economy. But rumors are coming out that it's manufacturing sector in panicking, with factories sitting idle and orders drying up. Even if reshoring is years away, companies literally cannot afford to order from China while the tariff's are in place. I was watching some of Gamer's Nexus's coverage of the tariffs, and companies were saying that with the tariff's they would lose $100+ selling a $100 PC case for example. So all they can do is shut down production and hope a solution presents itself. They haven't sold through their US stock (yet), but they sure as shit have cancelled their orders no matter what the penalty they have to pay.
Everyone has been saying that the $100 case will now cost $200, but it seems the companies here aren't willing to raise prices and bet on that.
If nothing else, this seems like it will provide some interesting data on the exact shape of supply/demand curves. I doubt either extreme is exactly right: prices will probably go up (if nothing else, to cover the tariff), and demand will probably go down. But as to exactly how much of each, nobody wants to admit it's a bit unknown.
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I factored that in to my prediction when I made it. Do you think the situation over there is so dire that they can't even afford to try and save face?
They have state controlled media. They can always just lie. Also, they can just cheat on whatever deals they do make and brag about it. Maybe Trump won't even notice.
I donno man. Even before 2024 Trump, I've been seen weird "read between the lines" predictions that China's economy is secretly fucked. But I never know what to take seriously, because it's basically a choice between believing state run media, or cranks. One side says everything is amazing and they have 8% GDP growth, the other side says China is already in a recession.
Then again, they say the same thing about the US...
But I find it not impossible to believe that inside the black box that is the Chinese economy, the wheels already came off long ago and it's just barely holding together with chewing gum and rubber bands.
And the rubber bands were manufactured in China.
Unless China is absolutely fudging their population numbers to UNDERCOUNT their population drastically (which would be a galaxy-brained move) then they are absolutely fucked in the medium term. There is no way to counterbalance a population where there's a massive class of consumers (the old and decrepit) and not nearly enough producers (young-middle aged workers) to keep everyone at a reasonable standard of living.
Its baked in. The collapse will come, Wile-E-Coyote already ran off the cliff, but they may be able to keep him from looking down for a while with propaganda and manipulation, or manage the fall down better than expected.
Yes, there is. "Keep everyone at a reasonable standard of living" is not a requirement for what remains a Communist dictatorship.
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I don't know about "secretly fucked". But they are very dependent on exports, and the US is their second largest market (after the E.U.), so whether they were fucked before or not, the tariffs fuck them now.
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I think there's at least two reasons combining here. One is the usual anti-Trump stuff (anything Trump does is bad), and the other is China boosterism (China is the greatest, they will crush the US industrially and their hypersonic missiles will destroy all our carriers and Taiwan will be theirs). Some of which is mere anti-Americanism/anti-Westernism and some of which is straight up enemy action from Chinese agents.
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